Southern Bayberry

Fast-growing native evergreen with berries that feed birds all winter on dry, sandy, salt-exposed sites where most plants fail.

Southern bayberry is the evergreen counterpart to northern bayberry, native to the southeastern coastal plain and growing faster and taller in warmer zones. The small, aromatic, blue-gray waxy berries that cover female plants in fall and winter are one of the most important bird foods on the eastern seaboard. Tree swallows eat them during fall migration, and yellow-rumped warblers depend on them through winter in coastal areas. This is the plant that keeps the birds there after the other fruit is gone. The narrow, lustrous evergreen leaves are fragrant when crushed, the same waxy coating that makes bayberry candles. It grows quickly on dry, sandy, infertile soils and fixes nitrogen, improving the soil as it grows. Salt spray doesn't touch it. Wind doesn't bother it. This is the native evergreen for difficult coastal, sandy, and low-fertility sites where little else holds.